Still more Tisdale Tricks: How Bob tries to hide the incline at WUWT

Update: 31 August 2013  Getting a lot of WUWT visitors today!  I've provided an update for them.  Bob Tisdale is either as thick as a brick or a liar.  You can read and comment here if you want to!

By now most people who read climate denier blogs would be aware of the awful trouble poor little Anthony Watts has with anomalies.  He is befuddled, bamboozled and betrayed by them over and over again.  He's not the only one.

However this time it's Bob Tisdale who wants to hide the rising global surface temperatures.  He often gets up to tricks like this and this, but deniers are the only ones who are willing to fall for them.

But before we get to that, Bob comments (archived here) about the NCDC/NOAA global temperature record.  Here is an excerpt from his WUWT article from today:

The opening paragraph of NOAA’s press release NCDC Releases June 2013 Global Climate Report begins with alarmist statistics and an error (my boldface):

According to NOAA scientists, the globally averaged temperature for June 2013 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest June since record keeping began in 1880. It also marked the 37th consecutive June and 340th consecutive month (more than 28 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last below-average June temperature was June 1976 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 1985.

First, the error: According to the NOAA Monthly Global (land and ocean combined into an anomaly) Index (°C), the “last below-average temperature for any month was” in reality was December 1984, not February 1985. Makes one wonder, if they can’t read a list of temperature anomalies, should we believe they can read thermometers?

Being of a sceptical bent, especially when it comes to WUWT, I went to the NODC/NOAA website and downloaded the data for February and the data for December.  The data I downloaded was not inconsistent with the NCDC report.  According to these data, the February 1985 anomaly from the 1901-2000 mean was zero while the December 1984 anomaly from the 1901-2000 mean was -0.1.

Then I checked Bob's source.  It happened to be measured to four decimal places.  The February 1985 anomaly from the 1901-2000 mean was 0.0027 (ie zero to two decimal places) while the December 1984 anomaly was  -0.0971 (or -0.1 to two decimal places).  So one could argue that technically Bob was correct.  However taking a temperature anomaly to four decimal places, or even three decimal places is cutting it fine.  Fake skeptics are often quick to screech "error bars" except when they are looking at a denier chart.  Nonetheless, February 1985 was not below average in either record.  It was exactly average in the first source and above average in the second.

I wonder if NCDC/NOAA had said that December 1984 was the last month "below average" would Bob have gone to my first source and claimed they should have referred to February 1985?

How Bob Tisdale tries to hide the incline

Now we come to the part where Bob wants to hide the incline.  Bob writes:

Second, it’s very obvious that NOAA press releases have degraded to nothing but alarmist babble. 

Why does he say it's alarmist babble?  Well, it's because they do a comparison with the twentieth century mean instead of the 1981-2010 mean.  Bob even puts up a picture to show us the difference.  Here it is - as always, you can click it to see the larger version if you want to.

 Bob writes:

If the NCDC had revised their base years to comply with WMO recommendations, the press release wouldn’t have the same alarm-bell ring to it.

So Bob, being either a scaredy cat himself and not wanting to face up to the reality of a warming world, or preying on the fears of the scaredy cats at WUWT, decides to rewrite the NCDC media release so that all the little fearful brains at WUWT can stop being alarmed:

According to NOAA scientists, the globally averaged temperature for June 2013 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest June since record keeping began in 1880. It also marked the 17th consecutive June and 16th consecutive month (less than two years) with a global temperature above the 1981-2010 average. The last below-average June temperature was June 1996 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 2012, though December 2012 was basically zero.

Bob would just love to hide the incline.

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Update (31 August 2013): I've inserted this clarification for Bob Tisdale, since he still doesn't "get it":


Here is the excerpt from the NCDC media release with Bob's suggested changes:

According to NOAA scientists, the globally averaged temperature for June 2013 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest June since record keeping began in 1880. It also marked the 37th consecutive June and 340th consecutive month (more than 28 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average. It also marked the 17th consecutive June and 16th consecutive month (less than two years) with a global temperature above the 1981-2010 average. The last below-average June temperature was June 1976 June 1996 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 1985 February 2012, though December 2012 was basically zero.

Bob Tisdale is trying to hide the temperature incline!

Bob wants to "hide" the warming by shifting the baseline up!  He doesn't want you to know that it's more than 340 months or more than 28 years since any monthly temperature was below the twentieth century average.  No-one aged 28 years or younger has ever in their life experienced a year where the global average surface temperature was at or below the average for the entire twentieth century.   No-one aged 37 years or younger has ever experienced a June that was colder than the average June temperature in the twentieth century.  That's what Bob doesn't want his readers to know.   Is Bob Tisdale trying to deceive people?  Yes.  He tries to deceive his readers into thinking that there has only been a couple of years of global warming.   In the words of the IPCC - it is unequivocal!


- o - End of 31 August update

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Think about this - are you a member of the privileged few?

The chart on the right shows the percentage of people in the world today younger than particular ages in years.  So 9% of people are younger than five years of age and 92% are younger than 65 years of age.

Data source: US Census Bureau

Lets play the anomaly game like Bob did, but using years. It's seventeen (17) years since there was a year with an average global temperature below the 1981-2010 average.  The last time was 1996. That means that around 30% of people alive today have never experienced a year where globally it was colder than the most recent three decade average.

For older readers who are as familiar with the period 1961-90, it's twenty eight (28) years since there was a year with an average global temperature below the 1961-90 average.  The last time was 1985 - and that was only 0.01 degrees below.  The second last time was 1978, a whole 35 years ago.

So almost half the people alive today have never in their lives experienced a year where the global surface temperature was colder than the 1961-90 average.  Almost 60% of people alive today would barely have noticed, since 1985 was only 0.01 degrees colder than the average.

Sixty per cent of the world today has never lived through a year colder than the 20th century average

What about last century as a whole?  The last time the annual global surface temperature was below the twentieth century average was 1976.  That's 37 years ago.  So around 60% of people alive today have never in their lives experienced a year cooler than the average of the twentieth century.

Data Source: NASA

Update:  Go here for the update.